Research on a work program for migrant labour suggests too many permits were approved too quickly. The number of applications okayed under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program more than doubled over two decades, from 86,000 to 213,000 last year: “This program could grow to be too large.”
Federal inspectors are pressing for updated safety regulations affecting hundreds of thousands of Canadian who travel by float plane. Rules call on crews to undergo more thorough emergency training and provide shoulder harnesses for all passengers.
A union representing 187,000 federal employees is appealing to cabinet to reconsider restrictions on right-to-strike provisions of federal law. The changes were inserted in a 309-page omnibus budget bill: “Extraordinary.”
Public Safety Canada is imposing a 42¢ tax on federal prisoners to pay for the Correctional Service’s telephone system.
Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney declined an interview on the compulsory fee to be charged all inmates whether or not they make a phone call.
“This government is interested in one thing – punishment, punishment, punishment,” said Liberal MP Wayne Easter, a former solicitor general.
Amendments to the Corrections and Conditional Release Regulations will see all inmates’ pay docked 8 percent every two weeks to pay the “administrative cost” of telephone privileges. Prisoners or their families currently pay for long-distance charges, while telecom companies pay to provide telephones.
“Little things like this matter,” said Easter, MP for Malpeque, P.E.I. “An inmate will now find it more difficult to stay connected with family or call legal counsel. Those things matter.”
The MP noted the Correctional Service has not raised inmates’ pay since 1981. Wages currently range from a basic allowance of $1 daily to $6.90 per day for work as janitors, kitchen helpers, groundskeepers and other prison labour.
“The cost of what inmates are supposed to buy for themselves – stamps, candy bars, phone calls – has increased since those pay scales were introduced,” said Correctional Investigator Howard Sapers, a federal ombudsman. “The amount of money inmates have to save for their release or send to their families has been significantly eroded.”
Telephone use is tightly restricted in the prison system. The Correctional Service reported all inmates must submit a “call list” of approved names, addresses and numbers of individuals they request to contact; and then must pre-pay a telephone card to make a call, typically from a centrally-located phone.
Sapers estimated five percent of inmates are foreign nationals: “The cost of an overseas call is $30. If you’re an inmate at the allowance level, one dollar a day, it means it will take a month to earn enough to call your family.”
Prison managers said the phone tax was intended to recover the $1.6 million annual cost of compiling inmates’ call lists and distributing phone cards.
“We get increasing complaints about the hardening of conditions of confinement – the actual experience of dong time,” Sapers said. “We see increased crowding, more use of force, more self-injury; we don’t see a growth in frivolous complaints.”
Sapers said most inmates are paid at in the range of $5.25 a day. More than 15,000 prisoners are in federal confinement, by Correctional Service estimate.
By Tom Korski 
Regulators are targeting telemarketers who bypass call-display technology in a practice called “spoofing”. The CRTC said it will work with the U.S. and Britain in a first attempt at a coordinated crackdown: “There is a lot of cross-border, fly-by-night activity that goes on.”
MPs will consider a private bill to delete all negative, partisan or self-promotional references from federal advertising. Legislation introduced in the Commons would require that ads be vetted by an advertising commissioner: “It’s called propaganda.”
The House of Commons has paid tribute to the nation’s longest-serving municipal politician. MPs noted the passing of a former Ontario parks commissioner who served a record 52 years in elected office: “If we had more politicians like him things would be a lot better off.”
A Department of Finance-friendly think tank is urging regulators to oppose “intervention” on retail credit card fees. The Macdonald-Laurier Institute reported any controls would have far-reaching impact on the nation’s economy: ‘It’s not some global conspiracy’.
Cabinet will press ahead with limits on federal employees’ right to strike despite an impending Supreme Court appeal on whether the measure is illegal. Treasury Board President Tony Clement said he would not pause for the court’s judgment: “I represent a national government.”
Cabinet is quiet on appeals for limits on trans-Atlantic bidding for government contracts under free trade with the European Union. However one trade official tells Blacklock’s that contracts will be “opening up” to EU bidders: “There will be more competition.”
Canada’s largest labour organization is citing cabinet for secrecy over changes to workplace health and safety coverage inserted in the 176th page of a budget bill. Labour Minister Kellie Leitch would not speak to reporters on the measure: “What reason do they have to implement this?”
Industry Canada is opposing a bill to require mandatory disclosure of corporate breaches of privacy under threat of half-million dollar fines. The bill’s author noted current federal law does not require that Canadians be told when their private information is leaked or pilfered.
Independent merchants say regulators must review growing consolidation in the grocery trade following approval of the latest mega-merger. The Competition Bureau declined an interview on calls for scrutiny of retail food: “Somebody needs to look at it.”
Cabinet is quietly restricting health and safety coverage for 800,000 Canadian workers.
The labour department in an obscure notice proposes to redefine workplace “danger” under the Canada Labour Code, repealing provisions that covered long-term illness from environmental hazards and other perils.
“It seems like a sneaky and subversive way to gut the Code,” said MP Pat Martin, New Democrat public works critic. “I’m an old union rep; you explain to me how dumbing down the health and safety provisions of the Canada Labour Code is in the best interests of Canadians.”
Labour Minister Kellie Leitch did not comment.
The amendments were inserted on the 176th page of a 309-page omnibus budget bill yesterday introduced in the Commons.
The current Labour Code occupational health and safety provision, sec. 122.1, states: “‘Danger’ means any existing or potential hazard or condition or any current or future activity that could reasonably be expected to cause injury or illness to a person exposed to it before the hazard or condition can be corrected, or the activity altered, whether or not the injury or illness occurs immediately after the exposure to the hazard, condition or activity, and includes any exposure to a hazardous substance that is likely to result in a chronic illness, in disease or in damage to the reproductive system.”
Under the omnibus Bill C-4, the entire definition is replaced with a single line: “‘Danger’ means any hazard, condition or activity that could reasonably be expected to be an imminent or serious threat to the life or health of a person exposed to it before the hazard or condition can be corrected or the activity altered.”
The labour department would not take Blacklock’s questions.
“All jurisprudence associated with the old Code definition is stripped away,” said Martin, MP for Winnipeg Centre. “Is it only unsafe if an anvil falls on my head? Or is it also unsafe if I’m exposed to chemical soup over time and end up with brain cancer as a result of exposure? These are distinctions that have been tossed out the window.”
A Toronto labour attorney, James McDonald of Sack Goldblatt Mitchell LLP, said the amendment appeared far-reaching and must be “carefully examined”.
“The clear intent of the amendment is to reduce the occasions when workers will be able to exercise their right to refuse to perform unsafe work,” said McDonald; “Without having reviewed the entire Code and all the proposed amendments to the Code in this bill, it is clear there will be many a situation that was a danger to an employee before this bill is passed, which will no longer be a danger to the employee after this bill is passed as far as this Government and employers are concerned.”
The labour department estimates 800,000 employees are subject to the Labour Code, including employees of most Crown corporations and federally-regulated industries like railways, marine shipping, airports, pipelines, uranium mining and broadcasting.
MP Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal Deputy House Leader, protested the method of amending federal labour law through little-noticed insertions in a budget bill.
“This is anti-democratic,” said Lamoureux, MP for Winnipeg North; “Why was it brought through the back door of an omnibus bill? Incorporating substantial changes in labour legislation in this way is just wrong.”
Other federally-regulated industries subject to the Labour Code include banking, telephone and cable systems, canals, tunnels, grain elevators, feed and seed mills, select fisheries and First Nations businesses.
“Workers in all these industries should be concerned in terms of this change of scope,” said Lamoureux. “This is significant.”
By Tom Korski
Cabinet is raising fines on companies that make false claims for a tax credit dubbed an “open bar” for Canadian industry. The penalties apply to dubious applications for the Scientific Research & Experimental Tax Credit: “There’s been a lack of oversight.”
